When Filial Devotion Fades: A Shina Poet’s Poignant Reflection on Changing Family Values
A Shina Poet’s poignant reflection on changing family values and the fading culture of filial devotion
The poetry of Murad Ali Shabon, the emerging Shina poet of Bagrote Valley, Gilgit, is remarkable not merely for its linguistic beauty or emotional depth, but for the manner in which it captures the changing psychology of society. His verses often seem to hold a mirror before the community, compelling it to look at itself—its changing relationships, altered priorities and, above all, the erosion of values that once constituted the moral foundation of traditional mountain society.
One such composition, recently shared by Bagrote Valley, Gilgit, is a deeply moving lament over the changing relationship between married sons and their ageing parents. Beneath its seemingly simple narrative lies a much larger social commentary: the transformation of family values under changing social circumstances and the displacement of traditional filial responsibility by a new hierarchy of affection and obligation.
The poet's complaint is not directed merely at an individual son. Rather, he appears to be describing a wider social transformation in which the mother who once occupied the most honoured position in a son's life may, after his marriage, gradually become an unwanted burden.
From a mother's lap to the margins of the household
The central tragedy in Murad Ali Shabon's poem is the contrast between a mother's lifelong devotion and the son's behaviour after marriage.
A mother brings up her son with immense care. She sacrifices her comfort, devotes her youth to his upbringing and watches him grow from childhood into adulthood. Every stage of his life is nurtured by her affection and sacrifice. Yet, when the son grows up, marries and establishes his own household, the very mother who gave him everything may find herself relegated to an inferior place within the family.
This is the contradiction that troubles the poet.
The son, who once depended upon his mother for everything, now appears to depend emotionally and materially upon his wife. The mother, meanwhile, is increasingly treated as though she were an outsider.
In the poet's perception, the transformation is so dramatic that the son begins to regard his mother and his mother-in-law as occupying virtually the same position—while, paradoxically, becoming increasingly distant from his own mother.
The social inversion is striking: the woman who gave him life becomes an inconvenience, while the woman who entered his life through marriage receives preferential treatment.
The mother-in-law and mother become equals—but not in affection
One of the poem's most powerful observations concerns the changed status of the mother after the son's marriage.
The poet suggests that the son begins to place his wife and mother on an equal footing in terms of importance, but the equality is itself deeply unequal in practice. The wife receives attention, affection and material fulfilment, while the mother is denied even her legitimate needs.
This is perhaps the most painful aspect of Murad's social criticism.
The poet is not objecting to a husband loving or caring for his wife. Nor does the poem appear to suggest that a son should neglect his wife for his parents. Rather, its underlying moral question is:
Why should marriage diminish a son's sense of responsibility toward the woman who sacrificed her entire life to raise him?
The issue, therefore, is not the love given to the wife but the love withdrawn from the mother.
A single garment for the mother, countless gifts for the wife
The poet makes his criticism particularly vivid through an everyday example.
On Eid and other festive occasions, the son repeatedly buys new clothes and other things for his wife. Whatever she asks for, he readily agrees. Her wishes become his obligations, and her demands are met without hesitation.
But when it comes to his mother, his generosity shrinks dramatically.
He may buy her only a single piece of clothing in an entire year and, with an almost dismissive attitude, tell her to wear it.
The imagery is devastating.
The poet likens the treatment almost to the presentation of a shroud—jamalee—as though the mother were being remembered only in anticipation of her death rather than being honoured while she is alive.
Here Murad Ali Murad exposes a profound moral irony: the mother is remembered as someone deserving of respect after death, while her legitimate needs are overlooked during her lifetime.
When parental advice becomes an intrusion
The deterioration does not stop with material neglect.
According to the poet, when the ageing parents attempt to express disagreement or raise their voice about something within the household, they may be told, in effect, not to disturb the son's peace.
The very parents whose authority once shaped the child's life are now portrayed as obstacles to the tranquillity of the son's new domestic world.
This represents a profound reversal of traditional family relations.
In the older social order of Bagrote and much of the mountain communities of Gilgit-Baltistan, parents were not merely biological caregivers. They were repositories of experience, tradition, family history and moral authority. Their counsel carried weight because their lives embodied sacrifice and accumulated wisdom.
Murad's lament suggests that this older arrangement is giving way to a more individualistic household structure in which the wishes of the newly formed nuclear family increasingly take precedence.
A changing Bagrote—and a changing society
It would, however, be simplistic to read the poem merely as an attack upon daughters-in-law or modern marriage.
Its deeper significance lies elsewhere.
The poem should perhaps be understood as a social document of transition.
Bagrote, like many valleys of Gilgit-Baltistan, has experienced enormous changes over the decades. Education, migration, modern employment, monetisation, exposure to urban lifestyles, improved communication, changing aspirations and the gradual movement from extended families toward nuclear households have inevitably altered interpersonal relationships.
The old household was based heavily on interdependence. Several generations could live together, work together and share responsibilities. The economic contribution of each family member was closely connected with the welfare of the household as a whole.
Modern life has introduced different expectations.
A married couple increasingly regards its own household as an independent social and economic unit. Privacy, personal choice and emotional compatibility have assumed greater importance. These developments are not necessarily negative. Indeed, many represent genuine improvements in individual dignity and family autonomy.
But Murad Ali Murad draws attention to the dangerous extreme of this transformation: when individual comfort becomes more important than gratitude, and when independence becomes an excuse for abandoning those who once made one's independence possible.
The real tragedy: remembering parents after death
The conclusion of the poem is perhaps its most profound moral lesson.
While the parents are alive, their needs may be ignored, their advice dismissed and their presence treated as a burden. But once they have died, their graves are adorned.
This is the tragic irony that Murad leaves before his audience.
Flowers, monuments, elaborate funerary observances and visits to the grave cannot substitute for the kindness that should have been shown during the parents' lifetime.
A grave can be decorated.
A tomb can be built.
A memorial can be erected.
But nothing can be done for the parent who needed a helping hand yesterday but received it only after death.
The poet's message is therefore ultimately one of urgency: serve your parents while they are alive.
A universal message beyond Bagrote
Although the poem emerges from the particular social landscape of Bagrote, its message transcends geography.
The tension between parents and married children is by no means confined to Bagrote or Gilgit-Baltistan. It is increasingly visible across societies undergoing rapid social and economic transformation.
The traditional extended family is changing almost everywhere. Children migrate to cities or abroad; women and men develop independent careers; households become smaller; elderly parents sometimes live alone; and the emotional architecture of the family changes along with its physical structure.
The challenge before modern society is therefore not to reject change but to retain humanity within change.
A son can love his wife without loving his mother less.
A daughter-in-law can be respected without displacing the mother.
Parents can be given dignity without depriving a young couple of privacy.
A family can modernise without abandoning gratitude.
That is perhaps the enduring wisdom hidden within Murad Ali Murad's lament.
The poet as social conscience
Great poetry does not merely entertain. It remembers what society is in danger of forgetting.
Murad Ali Murad's verses perform precisely this function. He transforms an apparently ordinary domestic relationship into a profound meditation on gratitude, ageing, motherhood, marriage, responsibility and mortality.
His poetry reminds us that the mother does not become less deserving of love merely because her son has married. Nor does a father cease to deserve respect simply because his children have established lives of their own.
The question ultimately posed by the poet is painfully simple:
If those who gave us their entire lives cannot receive our care when they need it most, what meaning remains in all our professions of love and respect after they are gone?
The grave should never become the first place where we demonstrate our gratitude.
Parents deserve our attention before the grave, not merely flowers upon it.
And perhaps this is the greatest strength of Murad Ali Murad's poetry: he does not merely lament the disappearance of an old social custom. He asks whether, amid all the changes that modern life has brought to Bagrote and elsewhere, we may also be losing something far more precious—the moral instinct to remember who stood beside us when we had nothing to give in return.
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